


To Cleanse With Fire

by taichara



Category: Shadowrun
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:09:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3116180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Tsimshian verges on complete environmental collapse, trying to stop the coming toxic terror may require staring right into that abyss ... and hoping it doesn't stare back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Cleanse With Fire

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _any, any environmentalist, they can't sit by idly although they know their actions are futile_

_They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions._

_Well, we’re headed straight there and I don’t see much good involved._

No good indeed; not in the ravaging of nearly every square metre of previously-untouched wilderness -- and fragging near everything _else_ \-- inside Tsimshian’s borders by Mitsuhama and their lapdogs, and not in the step Ecotope was about to take himself. But he couldn’t sit idly by and keep telling himself that directing other activists and runners into that toxic hellhole was enough, not any more. It was time to bit the bullet himself, and stop being a coward.

_Only a coward runs, even when the only choice is dying. If I have to die --_

_If I have to gamble my own sanity --_

_I’ll do it. We need to stop them now, somehow, some way, before that cancer spreads right down the coast._

… Even if it meant risking becoming as twisted and toxic as dozens, hundreds of other magically active, of all traditions, that spent too long in Tsimshian’s ravaged territory. There was just no other way. Mundane eco-runners were out of their league now.

_But I’m not going alone._

Fighting fire with fire. That’s what he’d call it, if he were still rationalizing and making excuses. But -- as he slipped the ‘trode net over his head and booted up his cyberterminal -- Ecotope couldn’t be bothered with that. No point, really.

As the Seattle LTG blossomed into digital existence in his awareness (so much, and yet unlike, astral space), he formulated the message, watched it come into existence as a leafy package bound with vines cradled in his avatar’s virtual hands:

`Deep Green. Meet me at Dante’s Inferno tonight at midnight.  
I have a proposition for you and your pals in TerraFirst! to head up north -- how do you feel about heading into the dragon’s jaws?`

Ecotope tossed the bundle into the ‘air’ and watched it fade into digital nothingness, winging towards its recipient. And, back in the meat world, clenched his hands on the worn arms of his chair.

Fight fire with fire, fight toxics with eco-toxics, hope they don’t drag him down with them …

_How did it get to this ...?_


End file.
